Pierre Lanarès, a jurist and champion of religious liberty, died in Clapiers, Southern France, on February 2, 2004, aged 92. Born 1912 in Madagascar, he worked for more than 44 years in different positions in the Seventh-day Adventist Church: in Madagascar, France and Switzerland. Pierre Lanarès studied Law in Paris, got his Ph.D in Geneva, and graduated from the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Faculty at Collonges-sous-Salève, France. He worked as a pastor, school principal, church leader, writer, producer of radio and TV programs and at the “Euro-Africa Division”, the European headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventists, in Berne. He was in charge of the following departments: Radio and Television, Education, Ministerial Association, Public Affairs and Religious Liberty.

From 1966 through 1982, he acted also as General Secretary of the International Association for the Defense of Religious Liberty, with headquarters in Berne, and consultative status at the United Nations and the European Council. His interventions on behalf of religious liberty took him to many European countries, in Africa, the Middle East and the United States of America. Besides the many contacts with important political and religious personalities, the organization of conventions, symposiums and meetings of experts, as well as the publishing and edition of the international magazine “Conscience et liberté” (Conscience and Liberty), the promotion of religious tolerance through education was also part of his assignment. To this he dedicated his talents as a lecturer in the French-speaking countries and his years spent as a school principal in Madagascar and France. Till his retirement, he also taught in the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Faculty at Collonges-sous-Salève, Haute-Savoie, in the vicinity of Geneva.

As Pastor Ulrich Frikart, the president of the Euro-Africa Division of the Seventh-day Adventists (Berne), stated to the Adventist Press Service APD, the world-wide interventions on behalf of religious liberty have been, for more than 100 years, a regular and important part of the policy of his church on behalf of the Human Rights. Ulrich Frikart expressed his appreciation for Pierre Lanarès’ international contribution, over many years, on behalf of liberty of religion and conscience, of the separation of Church and State, and for the pedagogical merits of his promotion of religious tolerance in a Christian perspective.